We’re in for another deadly lesson in exponential growth. This may be even more “instructive” than the last one.

Note on 1/17: I just put up a new post that puts the scary forecast numbers below in perspective. They're almost definitely too high, but how much lower they should be depends very much on what happens with hospital overcrowding.

I started writing these posts on Saturday, March 14, 2020, after reading a very disturbing article online. I didn’t intend to write the posts daily, but the next day I found more disturbing news and wrote another. For at least four months after that, I wrote a post almost every day. On Wednesday March 18 2020, I wrote about the worst aspect of the pandemic (which at that point had killed around 150 people in the US): the fact that cases and deaths were growing exponentially. I noted that deaths were more than doubling every two days. I concluded the post by saying “The word of the day, week, month and year: exponential.”

To show you what exponential growth meant then, in late March 2020, Covid deaths were almost doubling every day, which is about 700% growth weekly. On April 1, 5,113 people had died. On April 8, we were at 14,797 deaths, so weekly growth had slowed to “only” 200%. On April 15, the number was 32,443, meaning that weekly growth had slowed further to a little more than 100%. The growth rate continued to slow, mainly due to the total lockdowns that were put in place in New York City and other places (but definitely not the whole country).

However, even though the rate of growth in total deaths slowed, the absolute numbers became more and more appalling. Deaths in the US reached a high of almost 19,000 around April 20, which was the peak of the first wave. And why did the absolute numbers rise so much? Because exponential growth in deaths, by definition, means new deaths are equal to some exponent (> 1) of deaths in the prior period; as the base number keeps rising, the absolute number keeps increasing, even when the rate of growth slows drastically.

Weekly deaths peaked at around 30,000 at the end of January 2021, but now they’re at 13,170 and on their way up. As you can see from the numbers I’ve highlighted in red below, new cases have doubled in both of the last two weeks. What would happen to new deaths, if new cases continue to double every week in coming weeks? To compute that, I doubled the number of new cases every week going forward. Then I multiplied that number by the average ratio of weekly new deaths to new cases over the past three months, which is .007.

Do you really want to know what I found? It’s not too late to stop reading, and cancel your subscription to this blog…..

OK, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. The numbers are even more horrendous than I thought. If new cases double next week to 11,767,000, there will be 82,374 deaths next week. If new cases double the following week to 23,535,000, there will be 164,747 deaths that week. By the time everyone in the US is infected, about February 10, the weekly death toll will be about 1.2 million.

What will keep this from happening? Before Omicron, I would have said it’s the numbers of people vaccinated or who have had Covid in the last few months. But Omicron doesn’t seem to care much about those numbers, so I can’t even say that. I hate to say it, but everyone should probably pretend there’s an absolute government lockdown and go out as little as possible; and of course, businesses need to send employees back home and put in place as many protections as they can, if not shut down altogether.

I honestly didn’t expect to be saying this, but I can’t see what I’m doing wrong. Yes, the fact that Omicron kills fewer people than Delta means that the .007 multiplier I used is probably high (it might also be low for other reasons) – but even halving or quartering the deaths I’ve projected doesn’t make them any less horrendous (and keep in mind that new case numbers are probably a big undercount, since it’s certain that most people aren’t reporting positive tests done at home). We’re still in the millions of deaths a month by February or at least March.

What will finally save us? It depends on what you mean by “us”. If you mean the fully vaccinated and boosted Americans who are wearing N95 masks when indoors with other people, those very facts will mean any infection we get is likely to be mild and we won’t go to the hospital, let alone die. But if you’re referring to the proudly unvaccinated and maskless, and their unfortunate unvaccinated children and family members? Probably nothing will save them. .

When every adult and eligible child is either fully vaccinated/boosted or dead, the virus will finally be able to settle into a manageable sickness, worse than the common cold but maybe not as bad as the flu. Until then, we’re in for some rough times.

Have a nice day!

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, January 9.

Month	Deaths reported during month/year	Avg. deaths per day during month/year	Deaths as percentage of previous month/year
Month of March 2020	4,058	131
Month of April	59,812	1,994	1,474%
Month of May	42,327	1,365	71%
Month of June	23,925	798	57%
Month of July	26,649	860	111%
Month of August	30,970	999	116%
Month of Sept.	22,809	760	75%
Month of Oct.	24,332	785	107%
Month of Nov.	38,293	1,276	157%
Month of Dec.	79,850	2,576	209%
Total 2020	354,215	1,154
Month of Jan. 2021	98,604	3,181	119%
Month of Feb.	68,918	2,461	70%
Month of March	37,945	1,224	55%
Month of April	24,323	811	64%
Month of May	19,843	661	82%
Month of June	10,544	351	53%
Month of July	8,833	287	84%
Month of August	31,160	1,005	351%
Month of Sept.	56,687	1,890	182%
Month of Oct.	49,992	1,613	88%
Month of Nov.	38,364	1,279	77%
Month of Dec.	41,452	1,337	108%
Total 2021	492,756	1,350	158%
Total Pandemic so far	860,578	1,279

 

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday: 860,578

Average daily deaths last seven days: 1,881

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 1,365

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 1.6%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 62,026,004

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 5,883,829 (840,547/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 2,919,731 (417,104/day)

Increase in reported cases two weeks previous (week ending 12/25): 1,456,730 (208,104/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 10.5% (5.5% last week)

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.